HOUSEHOLDERS have been warned they could have their bins emptied just once a month in future, as Welsh councils strive to meet tougher recycling targets.

Councils across Wales have already moved from weekly to fortnightly collections of landfill rubbish, to encourage people to put out more waste for recycling.

But Wales’ leading council for recycling has now floated the idea of making collections of landfill longer than fortnightly.

One AM said this would be unacceptable to residents and claimed the Welsh Government was imposing over-ambitious green targets on local government.

However, the suggestion has met with support from environmentalists who say collecting residual waste – rubbish not set aside for recycling – every fortnight would be a waste of resources for councils across Wales in future as bins became increasingly empty.

The prospect of bin collections every three or four weeks demonstrates the divergence between Wales and England on waste management. The UK Government has earmarked £250m to help English councils meet the costs of continuing, or reverting to, weekly bin rounds, which it regards as a “basic right”.

In Wales, Anglesey council is ahead of the pack on recycling, already exceeding the Welsh Government’s 2012-13 target. Now it is exploring what it will have to do to meet recycling targets as they become progressively tougher.

It plans to invest £1.5m in redeveloping its public waste collection centres, allowing it to recover more recyclable material from the waste dumped there by residents. A planned North Wales regional facility for treatment of residual waste is expected to extract more recyclables from the contents of Anglesey’s bins.

Both of these measures could improve the local authority’s recycling rate to about 66% – but even that would fall short of the WG’s 70% target for 2024-25.

The council’s waste expert says other measures to encourage recycling must therefore be explored.

Meirion Edwards, chief waste management officer, said: “Further recycling options should be considered in the coming years to develop a strategy to deal with any shortfall.

“It is likely that further measures will need to be taken to encourage recycling at the kerbside, possibly by providing smaller wheeled bins for ‘black-bag’ residual waste – to reduce the volume available, which will increase recycling – or collect residual waste less frequently. Currently this is collected fortnightly.

“The method of collection and type of vehicles to be used should also be considered.”

Mark Isherwood, Conservative AM for North Wales, hit out at the idea of bins being emptied less often than fortnightly. “This would be totally unacceptable to residents of Anglesey, and another potentially unsustainable consequence of the Welsh Government’s pursuit of overly ambitious sustainable policies,” he said.

“The Welsh Government should only be issuing directives to local authorities and others with a clear understanding of the true costs involved and on the basis that funding has been provided accordingly.”

Flintshire council has recently introduced a new waste collection system in Mr Isherwood’s home county.

“It’s causing a lot of concern, particularly for older or more vulnerable people. There’s always the danger that if you make the system more complex, you end up collecting less to recycle than previously.

“Moving the goalposts even further away can only exacerbate the problem.”

Householders would simply take their rubbish to municipal dumps if bins were emptied less than fortnightly.

“There’s a high risk of increased fly-tipping as well,” he added.

Anglesey councillor Keith Evans said: “The collection of waste is something that affects every household every week or every fortnight. It’s the one service that the public recognise the local council does to their benefit.

“Any change in that direction has got to be put over in such a way that it persuades the public that they will benefit from it. I think we’ve got used to the fortnightly collection for residual waste.”

Reducing that collection to less than fortnightly would deliver the same benefits as the reduction of weekly collection did, and the electorate might accept it in future added Mr Evans, who represents Menai Bridge.

“Maybe at that time they can be won over, even though it may sound fairly draconian. In general terms, the public like what we’ve done so far, and trust us,” he said.

He also believed smaller bins would be welcomed in built-up areas of Anglesey.

“In parts of Holyhead, where there are terraces of houses, the big wheelie bins are cumbersome.”

Gareth Clubb, director of Friends of the Earth Cymru, said he would be pleased if Anglesey and other councils reduced residual waste collections further, provided they maintained frequent collections of food waste and sanitary waste such as nappies and pads. That would allay any public concerns about monthly residual waste collections attracting pests.

“We know that only 2% of people don’t recycle at all. By now, recycling is normal,” he said.

“In the areas where waste collections have gone from weekly to fortnightly, the amount of waste collected for recycling has increased significantly.”

This trend would make residual waste bins emptier and emptier. In a period when financial resources are scarce, people need to get good value for the tax they pay,” he added.

“It doesn’t make sense to have lots of refuse lorries moving around the country twice a month if they can achieve the same thing by collecting once a month. It’s a more efficient way of dealing with waste.”

A Welsh Government spokeswoman rejected Mr Isherwood’s accusations, saying it had worked closely with councils in setting the 70% recycling target.

“The target is driven by both economic and environmental factors, because we know that recycling is a much cheaper option than landfilling and that 70% recycling is more cost-effective than lower rates of recycling,” she said.

“Also, the more local authorities recycle the greater their opportunity to make money by selling valuable materials such as metals.”

Recycling also created more jobs than burying or burning waste did, she added.

“We know that our waste targets are ambitious, but we are on track to meet them and will continue to work closely with local authorities to help them deliver.”

Official statistics show that in the latest three-month period Anglesey council recycled or composted 59% of its waste – more than any other authority in Wales.

From the next financial year, councils face fines if they fall short of the Welsh Government’s initial statutory recycling target of 52%.

This has already prompted councils with poor recycling performance to take or consider radical steps to boost recycling.

In May, the Western Mail revealed Blaenau Gwent residents would be fined £100 if they repeatedly put out food waste with their residual waste instead of in separate containers. Blaenau Gwent’s annual recycling rate was just 35% at the time, and has since improved slightly.

Merthyr Tydfil, which also has a low recycling rate, drew up plans in July to stop recycling collections for 2,500 households, handing over the responsibility to residents themselves.

A community enterprise would manage kerbside collections and sort and sell the recyclable materials, employing local residents.